The initial 2003 report was issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in January 2003. The report identified federal real property as a high-risk area.

In response to GAO’s 2007 recommendation to improve the reliability of FRPP data, GSA OGP instituted a data validation process that precludes FRPP from accepting an agency’s data until the data pass all established business rules and data checks. GAO’s most recent analysis of the reliability of FRPP data found none of the basic problems that were previously found, such as missing data or inexplicably large changes between years. In addition, agencies continue to improve their real property data for their own purposes.

From a governmentwide perspective, GAO found that OGP has sufficient standards and processes in place for them to consider the 25 elements in FRPP as a database that is sufficiently reliable to describe the real property holdings of the federal government. As a result, GAO removed the data element of real property management from the high-risk list this year.

Real Property Issues

According to the GAO report, federal real property is a high-risk area for several reasons:

Executive Order 13327 is one effort currently underway to successfully address some of GAO's recommendations. The Order establishes a Federal Real Property Council (FRPC) in the Office of Management and Budget. The Council of Senior Real Property Officers are developing guidance for and working with landholding agencies to prepare and implement asset management plans.